(May 04, 2018) - Increasing tropospheric ozone concentration has endangered plant growth and crop production, further influencing greenhouse gas emissions from the plant-soil systems. Understanding the response of greenhouse gas emissions from differential ozone-sensitive wheat-soil systems to elevated ozone is important for evaluating the consequences of elevated ozone on soil carbon and nitrogen cycles, and there is a need for more research.

In the March-April issue of Agronomy Journal, researchers report on free-air ozone fumigation study from winter wheat system in Jiangsu, China where the effects of a 50% elevation above ambient ozone on soil emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane and their global warming potential were evaluated under ozone-sensitive and ozone-tolerant cultivars.

The team found that the ozone-sensitivity of wheat cultivar affected the responses of gaseous carbon and nitrogen emission and global warming potential to ozone elevation. Ozone-sensitive wheat would release more freshly assimilated C, increasing cumulative carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions and global warming potential in response to ozone stress, when compared to the ozone-tolerant wheat.

This study suggests that elevated ozone may impair soil carbon and nitrogen sequestration in an ozone-sensitive wheat-soil system in view of lower root biomass but higher carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions under elevated ozone.